This text is a rough translation of my article about OneNote, written in Russian in the middle of 2017.
I’ve seen articles about OneNote written in English many times, but not even once in russian. I saw articles about evernote, about GTD-systems, but not about this beautiful app from Microsoft. Why? — i’m not exactly sure, but certainly there is more than just one reason. OneNote is made by Microsoft, and this is already a factor which scares people away. It’s a product from Office “family”, so many people in advance consider it as a paid product, made for pro-users or some specific kind of work. Or they simply have never heard about it. And i can associate with them, for example i have no idea what Excel is about (for making cool looking tables? bookkeeping? i don’t know).
So, may i introduce you — this is OneNote, your own encyclopaedia, pocket (service, bought by Mozilla), to-do list, Pinterest or notebook.
You have to make something out of OneNote, it’s not the most simple, welcome or “warm” to the user product, no, you will have to understand it. I mostly will talk about version for Windows, implying that you already has Windows or Mac computer (on the moment of writing this text in Russian i had PC, now i’m using macbook, so screenshots are different), version for mac is much younger then its Windows counterpart, though sometimes it’s for the better, trust me. And one more thing, my way of use is obviously not ideal, it’s all up to you.
Let’s start with hierarchy.
It’s a very important part, but it may seem a little bit overdone or difficult because there are more than just notes and notebooks.
I’ve tried my best to show you all the types of organisation you can (but not ought to) use in OneNote.
Notebooks are the biggest. By default they are divided in sections, but you can create a group of sections and put even more sections in it, and you can have as much groups as you want, but don’t overextend, each notebook is literally a one archive file with all the stuff you put in pages in it. More images, scans and so on leads to bigger notebook size, bigger size — longer initial sync time which is not instant, of course. I have only one huge section group at all, mostly because initially i didn’t know about them, and had all the notes for studying/university in another notebook, but got tired of it and found out just by clicking on everything in the app that i can create one more level of organisation. As i’m aware, there’s no limit for pages or sub-pages (sub-pages are highlighted only visually, so when you are scrolling through the list of them you will have one more way to differentiate them).
Tips & tricks
It’s an approximate list of OneNote features i use in general:
- OneNote is free (as long as you have space in onedrive, you can create new notes and put stuff in it)
- sync with onedrive (for me it’s been 4 years without lost pages, information or problems with sync, but if you scroll through /r/onenote you will find out that it’s not ideal)
- pages are literally ENDLESS
- you can put links, files, scans (pdf/word) of documents on pages in any order you want, think about pages as one BIG WHITEBOARD
- text from photos/scans is analysed and is available for the search (works with english, can’t say much about other languages)
- you can paint/highlight with your finger, mouse, trackpad or stylus
- videos from popular hostings have previews and can be watched right in the app (youtube, dailymotion, vimeo and others)
- there is an extension for browsers which can save article, part of the page or the whole page as an image
- you can record sound and it will be saved as file in notes (record lectures, for example, btw quality depends on the device you use)
- text formatting is available, it’s like simplified version of word
- if you past content from the web page (for example you copied text), OneNote shows link for the source
- you can export pages to .pdf/.docx/.one/.xps (advice: if your page is full of photos with text — use print to pdf from web version of OneNote, for some reason quality of exported files is higher)
- web version does exist, but it’s not great by any means
drawbacks:
- web version sucks
- notebooks size is pretty big if you put images or any other files in pages
- if notebook is heavy, it will take some time for initial sync. in my case it takes 20–25 minutes to sync my main notebook (900 mb in size) for the first time, following synchronisations take 30 seconds or so to show on other devices
- apps on different platforms are not equal, yes, notes will be accessible everywhere, but the biggest number of features still has old version of Office 2016 for Windows Desktop (win32)
- no tags system
- it’s not easy to collaborate with other people on notes. if you share a link for the page, person automatically sees the whole notebook if i’m not mistaken (haven’t tried this for a year or so). you can’t share a group of notes, so i usually end up with exporting page in .pdf and share it directly through some messenger.
- developers are great guys, but you as an end user have no way to request features or influence development in any way. The way Microsoft develops UWP version for Windows 10 provokes questions, especially from old users
- no way to store notebooks locally (only in desktop Windows version, which is not getting new features anymore, but still is the most feature-rich over all platforms)
As a notebook
If you are a student, noone can stop you from drawing over the pages/scans/imported pdf, highlighting text and so on (windows tablet + stylus is the best way for doing this).
All your information is available for search, and trust me, you will love and appreciate this. Also, don’t forget that you can record lectures, but you will probably have to find a seat close to professor.
As a counterpart to Pocket
You probably heard about Pocket, it’s a service which allows you to save articles for reading them later. But if it’s a paid article from the site which has subscription model or something, you won’t be able to read it later, whereas OneNote takes an article as a text or the whole page as an image and saves it to itself, so you can share it with somebody or read years later when your subscription is expired or publication or authors blog doesn’t exist anymore (anything may happen).
Make your own Pinterest if you want
OneNote pages are a whiteboards and you can pin whatever you want in any order you want and in any amount you want (just keep in mind that it takes place and notebook gets bigger).
Infinite number of pages and size of notes
In the section about English grammar i have 86 pages of questions for the exams. It’s literally improvised textbook, these pages are full of text and screenshots from different textbooks or .pdf scans from other students or word docments which i put in the pages. It’s all available for search and will always be there.
I love OneNote, as of right now i can say that it’s hard for me to imagine my life without this tool being here for me. I write everything in it, stuff i need to buy, plans of lessons i will give to the children on monday (i practice as a teacher in local school). I save links here, articles to read, sometimes even links for the videos to watch, tv shows, books, everything i find interesting — goes here.
In addition:
- Very impressive way of using OneNote for todos and shopping lists (example_of_how_i_use_onenote_for_todos_and)
- Even more examples of how people organise their information in OneNote (how_do_you_organize_your_onenote)
Reach me:
